A recommendation is expected to come sometime this week on whether or not the Georgia Board of Education will pursue allegations that the Floyd County Schools’ mass layoff violated their charter.

On May 8th, Superintendent McDaniel and the school board travelled to Atlanta to speak with the state’s Charter Committee. The informal discussion was fueled by citizen complaints that local governance teams and school councils were not involved in the decision to slash 120 employees.

Based on that meeting, school spokesman Tim Hensley believes the system’s charter contract will continue with the state.

“It was a good time for us to sit down and be able to share information with them, rather them going on things they’ve received in emails or maybe they’ve heard from people not directly involved in the school system,” Hensley says. “From that discussion, we feel like it’s a very good sign that they wish to move forward with our school system, working with the charter advisory committee and the state board as a charter system.”

If the committee does decide to pursue the issue, a hearing could be called. And, if then the schools are found to have breached their charter, it could be stripped.

For 120 employees, next Friday will be their final day working for the Floyd County School System.

Despite being forced to defend the RIF policy, this fact has not gone unforgotten by school officials.

“We are going to be losing a lot of good people we would like to have back next year. But, unfortunately, we have to work within the amount of money provided by the state and locally,” Hensley says. “While we’re losing some excellent people, we hope we were able to do this early enough they were able to look for other jobs in other school systems. Most school systems will generally do a RIF policy in May.”

Floyd’s RIF policy was enacted in January in order to combat a projected $10 million budget shortfall.